Karkwa is back with a bold and fine album. No doubt, the chemistry still operates, both on record and on stage, within this group whose absence has magnified the aura.
It wasn’t a secret gig, but almost: On Tuesday, Karkwa played L’Escogriffe, his first show in Montreal in ages. Announced only a few hours earlier, this double (another show took place on Wednesday at the same place) was quickly sold out. It was not yet the great return of the quintet on hiatus for 13 years, rather a warm-up concert for the tour which will follow the release, this Friday, of an unexpected album entitled In the second.
It was terribly hot in the vault on rue Saint-Denis where around 200 fans were crowded, happy to hear Louis-Jean Cormier, François Lafontaine, Martin Lamontagne, Julien Sagot and Stéphane Bergeron playing together again. No doubt happy to know that they could tell for a long time that they were there when Karkwa broke his new tunes at L’Esco before the release of the album.
The long break, which materialized in 2012, after the Chemins de verre tour, an album that won the group the Polaris Prize, left no visible or audible scar. The cohesion of the group was intact. The only thing that has changed is that Louis-Jean Cormier sports a mustache these days which, with its curly hair that grows more and more rebellious as the concert progresses and the heat increases, gives him the air of Frank Zappa or Charly Garcia. There is a bit of these two, moreover, in the rock of Karkwa who, on Dans la second as on his previous records, refuses the obvious.
The five guys from Karkwa were already heading into the evening concert, during a listening session organized a few hours earlier in a studio on rue Dandurand. “We’re in the live and it’s been a while since we listened to the album again,” explains Stéphane Bergeron. That’s why we take the leap sometimes. In the studio, we pile up the tracks, but in the show, we do it at five. You have to make choices… or create something else. »
Ideas pass from one to the other with a wave of the hand, a look or a few words slipped into an ear. It is true that transposing the material of In the second on stage should not be an easy task: of all Karkwa’s records, it is the richest and the least direct. It’s powerful, but was obviously built with a lot of copying and pasting. “If we had done it in the 1970s, we would have played the blade,” confirms Louis-Jean Cormier, referring to the cutting of magnetic tapes that was done before the advent of digital.
Karkwa did not consider his return as a commercial operation. This return is first and foremost a matter of feeling. “If a guy in the gang had said he didn’t feel it, it wouldn’t have happened,” assures François Lafontaine, specifying that this reunion would have been impossible without the five original members. “The band is these five guys,” insists the keyboardist. Something happens when the five of us are together. »
Before starting the work, the musicians had given themselves a rule: start from scratch, no sketches brought by one or the other. “We didn’t make it easy,” says Martin Lamontagne. Finding himself after 10 years of absence to compose new songs from scratch is, according to him, like jumping into a void. The idea, according to Louis-Jean Cormier, who has had a fruitful solo career since his album Le thirteenth floor (2012), was to “turn off the mind and go instinctively”.
The approach has helped the group to evolve artistically, thinks François Lafontaine, who has notably played with his partner Marie-Pierre Arthur in recent years. “Everyone has done a lot of business over the last ten years, worked with other people or on solo projects, everyone has acquired a different artistic background,” he emphasizes. This means that even if we didn’t have any songs when we arrived in the studio, we still had something to offer that would help break out of the framework in which we were used to working. »
Does In the Second sound like Karkwa from before? No. Is it Karkwa? No doubt about it. We find on this album his ideas of grandeur, his sense of adventure, his rock energy, but also a new finesse. We have the feeling that the group did not force themselves to put the pedal to the floor. There are powerful ground swells, but also a lot of breaks and controlled skids. “We could have made a much more rock record, as we used to do, but we still kept it quite songlike,” notes Julien Sagot.
“It was really nice to be able to rely on friends, on outside ears,” adds the percussionist, who has published four records under his name since 2012. “When you have a solo career, it’s always yourself, On all fronts. » This detail is crucial: between them, there is total trust on an artistic level. “Karkwa is a band. Everyone has an idea about everyone’s instruments, says the drummer, Stéphane Bergeron. The bad part of this is that sometimes you can talk for a long time before you start playing! »
The group spirit is also displayed in the album booklet, of which all the songs, lyrics and music are signed Karkwa. Even the texts, although written by Louis-Jean Cormier and Julien Sagot, which include the most touching lines heard so far at Karkwa. Like these, taken from À bout blank: “Your hand in mine/Hoping for good weather to return/Outside as well as inside…” Karkwa dares to say things that he would not have assumed when he was younger.
This group is now very mature. “There is more listening and there is less ego, that is important to say,” says François Lafontaine. Back then, we were together all the time, but we didn’t really know what was going on in the other guys’ lives. There, we can have discussions that have nothing to do with music and, for me, that’s what interests me the most.
“I know he can play, he can compose or he can write,” he said, pointing to one or the other of his comrades. What interests me is where they are at humanly. Where have we all gone. And to be able to share that. I think it’s important for it to be healthy. »
